La Tombe
by shan14
Summary: Memorials to those long gone scatter the corners of the Sanctuary Network. They're visited often.
1. i Kate

i.

The small, white marble head stone sits in a quiet corner of the Sanctuary.

Kate visits here often.

When she first arrives (that is after the betrayal and a gunshot wound and the threat of Cabal victory) it is to hallways filled with wisps of a young woman's laughter; flickers of golden hair around corners and the memory of a child who shall not return.

She ignores the blatant loathing the simmers behind Helen Magnus' gaze. Ignores Will's stumbles over A's and K's and Biggies avoidance of her down corridors. Henry doesn't hate her. Even worse he accepts her, but it is with a heavy heart and the promise of tears behind each word and glance.

He misses Ashley more than she can comprehend, and it angers her that this majestic Sanctuary must keep grinding away whilst it's inhabitants grieve.

She finds the small headstone by mistake one afternoon and feels like she's stepped onto forbidden territory. She was never a part of Ashley Magnus' life. Surely she doesn't deserve to be part of her memory.

She is curious, however, and somewhat drawn to the patch of dappled sunlight finds herself once more sat by the headstone beneath the trees.

She doesn't speak the first few times. Instead she twirls slithers of grass between her fingertips and waits for the beep of her pager.

One day, however, after Magnus' smile lingers on her a moment; after she finishes unpacking the van with a joking Will, and Henry has dragged her into the lab to admire his new creation; after all these events that have become the norm but somehow still seem colossal improvements, she finds herself seated by Ashley Magnus' headstone with a flower in hand. She places it gently upon the grass and stands in the midday sun.

"They're getting better," she murmurs, and rest her fingers across the marble.


	2. ii Nikola

ii.

He rants at the headstone.

It's somewhat therapeutic.

He rants about electrotherapy and nuclear power and space ships that hurtle towards the outer reaches of space. Not to mention the blatant rip off that is worldwide education systems ignoring his greater achievements and that Helen Magnus has somehow found herself pregnant, when he's sure the woman knows the fine art of safe sex; and really, how could she be so stupid as to have a child on the centenary of their use of the source blood!

He runs his hands through dark spikes of hair and feels a current throb through his body. It pulses down his spine and into the earth below, electrifying the air he paces through ahead of the small stone cross.

He's not sure who continues to leave flowers there, surely his old friends family are long gone – and wasn't that a shock! - arriving on the shores of England 20 years after the war to find Nigel had married that girl he'd met in Normandy.

Someone continues to leave flowers month after month, a tidily cut bunch each time Nikola appears in the wind swept cemetery, and it brings a strange sense of satisfaction, that someone else continues to return to the Invisible Man.

He's almost sorry he missed the funeral. Though Helen would have killed him if he'd been seen. She and James had a hard enough time ignoring John hovering some hundred metres in the distance.

Instead he pays his respects by ranting some twenty years later.

Surely, he thinks, the invisible man would have found it amusing. Nigel and John were always having a chuckle over his finer mental emergencies, flicking a cricket ball between them whilst he and James balanced chemicals over flames, or plonking at the piano Helen foolishly brought into the laboratory whilst the three scientists worked at extracting a pure serum of blood.

Yes. Nigel would find his weekly rants fine entertainment.

_(And on the few occasions when he's perfectly honest with himself, when the wind dies down and Nigel's final resting place is quiet, he takes a moment to lay his fingers to the grating stone and smile at memories long gone. He'd almost thought they were immortal, The Five. _

_But then Nigel had always wanted to disprove his theories)_


	3. iii James & Ashley

iii.

It's funny what the mind remembers.

James tugs absentmindedly at the sleeve of his jumper and wishes he'd brought something warmer. The young girl knelt before him is shivering violently.

In front of her sits an eroding white cross, one of many scattered throughout St Cuthberga's churchyard. He hasn't been here in over 100 years, but as Ashley continues her silent vigil he can't help but drift through such memories.

It was sunny. Such a contradiction to the snow strangling the ground.

The funeral was quiet; family mostly, and consisted of a few chaste words before the coffin was lowered into the grave.

James had stood watching the tree's sway in the distance, a light breeze gently nudging at snow dappled branches. John would have found it fascinating, he pondered; such sunshine in the middle of winter – and with a jolt he had remembered the name engraved on the simple white cross before him.

He'd gripped Helen's hand tightly to quell the pitch and roll of his stomach.

"In memory of Montague John Druitt," he can hear Ashley murmur, the ghost of Helen's grasp still aching up his arm.

"Why did you bring me here?" she asks finally, only now turning towards her godfather.

One day he'll tell her that was John's doing. That he'd announced loud one Sunday afternoon that when he eventually convinced Helen to marry him James would be godfather to their child. James had smiled widely and laughed at his friend's ambition (Helen was still yet to acknowledge the rambunctious cricketers existence) and told him that if he _did_ ever manage to convince Helen Magnus to marry him he'd preside over the nuptials himself.

His legs ache terribly and he can feel the machinery weighed to his chest groaning in opposition to the cold.

Why did he bring Ashley to the freezing grounds of Wimborne Minster?

Certainly it was not to recall the horrid feeling of betrayal that had overwhelmed each moment of the funeral. Or the trembling in Helen's fingertips as John's younger sisters had cried, unawares that their brother was watching just beyond the horizon, not laying peacefully in the coffin now slowly being covered in dirt.

If he could erase any memory it would be that of Helen grieving the loss of a man now turned evil. The heart clenching sight of her accepting condolences for the life of a young man full of love and laughter, who had destroyed her laughter, and her heart, one bloody afternoon when she'd stumbled, near catatonic, into James' office, holding the wisps of a red stained collar.

Ashley had been so like Helen earlier that morning, when she'd burst through the doors of the London Sanctuary teeming with rage and betrayal.

She yelled at him in anger, throwing insults and curses at the his ageing body until she could yell no more, finally collapsing against the wall in tears of agony.

Her father was a bloody_ serial killer_, he was sure she'd been muttering, and all at once he'd pulled her to her feet, propelling her towards the door and a car that would take them to Dorset.

They'd arrived in the afternoon and James had set her down before the white cross; silent and unmoving, allowing her time to understand, and grieve.

"He's dead, isn't he. The man mum loved. My father," she murmurs finally, coming to stand besides James in the freezing cemetery. She grips his hand and he winces slightly, the familiarity in her grasp too much amidst the storm of memories.

The sun is setting and she's spent the better half of two hours staring at a name that seems so foreign, so unconnected to her being, even though his blood runs through her fast and thick, closer than anyone save her mother.

"He was a good man, your father," James finally utters, rubbing his thumb fondly across Ashley's smooth skin. She's ice cold to touch, and so he wraps his jumper around her, pulling her to his side.

"I'm sorry you never got to see that, see him, the way he was before. He would have been a wonderful father," he admits softly, and smiles gently at Ashley's small nod.

"Let's get you home," he murmurs, nudging her from the cemetery.

She pauses at first, turning once more to look at her father's grave and finally rests her fingers along the smooth white cross, as if a part of her has settled with his memory.

James hopes one day he shall do the same.


End file.
